Mexican Pieta, a lithograph produced by Luis Jimenez (1940-2006) in 1983 sits in the Mexican Museum's permanent collection.

Photo: Christine Delsol, Special To SFGate

Mexican Pieta, a lithograph produced by Luis Jimenez (1940-2006) in...

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Diego Rivera's sketch, Los Pobres ( The Poor ), pencil on rice paper from 1946, is part of the museum's permanent collection.

Photo: Christine Delsol, Special To SFGate

Diego Rivera's sketch, Los Pobres ( The Poor ), pencil on rice...

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Bomba Barrococo, by Ray Abeyta, 2004, is acrylic on linen canvas and part of the Tequila Don Julio Collection currently on exhibit.

Photo: Christine Delsol, Special To SFGate

Bomba Barrococo, by Ray Abeyta, 2004, is acrylic on linen canvas...

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Included in the permanent collection is this self-portrait by famous Mexican muralist David Alfaro Siqueiros (1896-1975), a lithograph made in 1937.

Photo: Christine Delsol, Special To SFGate

Included in the permanent collection is this self-portrait by...

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"Acto de Fe," an acetate and lambda print by Mexican-born artist Tatiana Parcero at the Mexican Museum. Parcero uses her body as a canvas, overlaying parts of her anatomy with scientific diagrams, maps and Aztec codices.

Photo: Courtesy Mexican Museum

"Acto de Fe," an acetate and lambda print by Mexican-born artist...

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La Bandera ( The Flag ), by Jose Clemente Orozco (1883-1949) is also in the permanent collection. He produced lithograph in 1928, a somber image reflecting on the human toll and unresolved outcomes of the revolution. Exhausted soldiers carry the flag, followed by a pregnant woman perhaps carrying the next generation into an uncertain future.

Photo: Christine Delsol, Special To SFGate

La Bandera ( The Flag ), by Jose Clemente Orozco (1883-1949) is...

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A table in the gift shop holds items from the Smithsonian relevant to the Mexican Museum's collection, a sign of the museums' affiliation.

Photo: Mexican Museum

A table in the gift shop holds items from the Smithsonian relevant...

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The Mexican Museum's permanent gallery, pictured here, is currently located at Fort Mason. The 706 Mission condominium development it's slated to move to will offer 40,000 square feet of space.

The museum will occupy 40,000 square feet in Millennium Partners' 706 Mission condominium development at Mission and Third streets, in the Yerba Buena cultural district, seen in the lower left of the photo.

Photo: Paul Chinn, The Chronicle

The museum will occupy 40,000 square feet in Millennium Partners'...

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Jonathan Yorba, CEO of the Mexican Museum, pictured in 2010.

Photo: Lance Iversen, The Chronicle

Jonathan Yorba, CEO of the Mexican Museum, pictured in 2010.

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The museum's latest acquisition, the Tequila Don Julio Collection, includes 19 works from 17 of today's best Latin American artists, including Bay Area artists Viva Paredes, Caleb Duarte and Julio Cesar Morales.The Mexican Museum's Adjunct Curator David de la Torre stands at the entrance.

Photo: Mexican Museum

The museum's latest acquisition, the Tequila Don Julio Collection,...

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The Fort Mason quarters are palatial compared with the two rooms on Folsom Street that the museum moved from in 1982, but with more pieces, the museum is busting at the seams. Museum CEO Jonathan Yorba is pictured here with his assistant Arian Cervants.

Photo: Mexican Museum

The Fort Mason quarters are palatial compared with the two rooms on...

The road to a proper showcase for the Mexican Museum's extensive permanent collection — generally recognized as the country's best collection of Mexican and Mexican American art, most of it unseen — stretched more than 15 years that saw a capital campaign tank in the wake of the dot-com bust, a three-year shutdown and abandonment of a handsome six-story design by Ricardo Legorreta, Mexico's most prominent architect until his death on Dec. 30 at age 80. But persistent efforts finally gelled with the now-disbanded San Francisco Redevelopment Agency's release of $10.5 million for the project and the California Cultural and Historical Endowment's $800,000 planning grant to design and develop the new museum.

The museum will occupy 40,000 square feet in Millennium Partners' 706 Mission condominium development at Mission and Third streets, in the Yerba Buena cultural district. The developer is seeding the museum's endowment fund with $5 million.

"Our relationship with the Smithsonian should definitely make funding agencies give us a closer look," said museum CEO Jonathan Yorba.

Yorba, who came on board in 2010, was no stranger to the museum, having served as interim curator and acting director in the 1990s. Though he regrets having to give up Legorreta's bold standalone design, he said this kind of multi-use arrangement is the trend for new museums.

The scaled-back plan will still be nearly four times the museum's current 10,500-square-space foot space at Fort Mason. The Fort Mason quarters were palatial compared with the two rooms on Folsom Street that the museum moved from in 1982, but they became severely cramped as the permanent collection of Mexican and Mexican American art from pre-Hispanic to contemporary times grew to more than 14,000 pieces.

And it's still growing. One recent acquisition is the collection of Rex May, owner of the legendary Christmas Store on Sacramento Street. His Victorian was packed to the rafters with Mexican folk art — rough count 2,500 pieces — and after his death, May's partner, Charles Little, donated the collection to the Mexican Museum with the proviso that a replica of May's living room be installed in the new museum. That might not be possible, but Yorba and his adjunct curator, David de la Torre, have created an intimate atmosphere reminiscent of a living room in the Peter Rodriguez gallery (named for the artist who founded the museum).

The museum's latest acquisition, the Tequila Don Julio Collection, includes 19 works from 17 of today's best Latin American artists, including Bay Area artists Viva Paredes, Caleb Duarte and Julio César Morales. Paredes' work, a wall of tongue-shaped receptacles holding wild oats, calendula, contra yerba and other medicinal herbs, represents her difficulties with language while growing up in a Mexican American family in the Bay Area. Tatiana Parcero, a Mexico City native living in Argentina, uses her body as a canvas, overlaying parts of her anatomy with scientific diagrams, maps and Aztec codices.

It's a varied and arresting collection, creating such thought-provoking images as Morales' "Low Rider Mambo," a line of drums made out of wheel rims; a low-rider car enshrined in the type of decorative fancywork more often seen around images of the Virgin of Guadalupe, in "Bomba Barrococo" by Ray Abeyta; and Taka's untitled, truly frightening painting involving a clown, a demon, several animals, a cartoonish ghost-like figure and myriad images and symbols that emerge only after you gaze at it for some time.

The exhibit is on view through Aug. 5, overlapping with the "Images: Independence and Revolution" exhibit, which opened in September to coincide with Mexico's centennial/bicentennial celebration and will close April 1. Drawn primarily from the permanent collection, it displays paintings, photographs and other objects spanning two centuries. Among them are a self-portrait by David Siqueiros, a sketch by Diego Rivera, and Rupert Garcia's horrific but strangely beautiful painting from a photograph of an assassinated Mexican worker on strike in 1979.

Such exhibitions can only display a small sampling of the permanent collection, but the museum will continue to display what Yorba calls its "Gem Series" to show the public the treasures it has under wraps. And while the new museum comes together, Yorba and de la Torre are planning a host of new activities at its current incarnation at Fort Mason. Yorba has already brought Chef Telmo Faria of Tacolicious on board as Curator of Culinary Arts and has ambitious plans for programs combining food events with relevant artwork.

The two also have plans on the drawing board to bring Family Sundays, after-hours Friday night events coordinated with other Fort Mason tenants, hands-on activities for kids and programs for seniors to the museum's calendar. They are brainstorming educational tours, virtual tours and even guided tours to Mexico and other destinations.

Until they figure out where to make room for the enormous "Smithsonian Affiliate" flag in the back room, the first tangible sign of their partnership is a table in the gift shop with items from the Smithsonian relevant to the Mexican Museum's collection: coffee-table books on Mexican and Latin American art, Smithsonian coffee mugs, T-shirts with La Catarina's grinning visage and Frida Kahlo figures among them. Exchanges of artwork and collaborative exhibitions will be coming later, with Smithsonian assistance in presenting related education and performing arts programs, speakers and teacher workshops.

These are heady days, to be sure, but the move is still four years away, and the museum won't be standing still in the meantime. The next few years look to be the best time ever to visit the museum, while it is gearing up its activities but is still casual and intimate.

Former Chronicle travel editor Christine Delsol is the author of "Pauline Frommer's Cancún & the Yucatán" and a regular contributor to "Frommer's Mexico" and "Frommer's Cancún & the Yucatán."